*NEWS*H-P EXECUTIVE JUMPS SHIP TO IBM !

[Anonymous]

	H-P Executive Jumps Ship to IBM After Three Months
The executive overseeing Hewlett-Packard Co.’s disaster- recovery unit resigned after just three months in the post for a similar job at International Business Machines Corp. John A. Jackson, who joined H-P in June as Director of its Americas business- continuity-services group, was named vice president of IBM’s business- continuity and recovery unit. The 56-year-old will oversee strategy, business development and marketing, said an IBM spokesman. Prior to joining H-P, Mr. Jackson ran Comdisco Inc.’s disaster-recovery operation, a business H-P tried to buy two years ago. The company lost out to a higher bid from SunGard Data Systems Inc.. Mr. Jackson’s departure from H-P comes amid several executive resignations in the last month. Howard Elias, senior vice president of business operations and management for H-P’s Enterprise Systems Group, and Hugh Jenkins, vice president of marketing for industry-standard servers, both resigned recently. At IBM, Mr. Jackson succeeds Don DeMarco, who was named vice president of IBM Integrated Technology Services, Americas. Donna Scott, a vice president at market watcher Gartner Inc., said Mr. Jackson is known as “a very innovative manager” who revamped Comdisco’s business to focus on business-applications recovery at a time when most rivals were strictly hardware- focused. She added IBM’s business recovery unit is “at least four to five times larger than H-P’s. It’s a significantly bigger role” for Mr. Jackson. Ms. Scott estimated IBM’s annual revenue from the business-continuity unit is between $700 million to $800 million, while H-P’s unit has about $150 million to $200 million in annual revenue.

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October 7, 2003 at 2:40 PM